The modern study of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) effectively began in the nineteenth century, when scholars, through painstaking critical analysis of the biblical text, discovered that the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) was written not by one author — Moses, according to venerable tradition — but by several, over the course of several centuries. It was “the Documentary Hypothesis,” as this discovery came to be called, that laid the foundation for the modern discipline of biblical studies. In this course, we will take the analysis of the Pentateuch into its original sources as our starting point, and begin carefully reading our way through it, from the creation of the world to the exodus from Egypt. We will discover that modern interpretation, rather than stripping the Bible of its literary brilliance, has actually helped restore the original luster of its narrative art. Various secondary readings will raise other issues — historical and literary — necessary to a critical understanding of this foundational book, or rather, collection of composite books.
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